Summer vacation with Uncle Gus was a flavor, a spice that seasoned my sense of time and place. A woman taught me this, a tall, dark-haired gal who took me on a tour around the Mediterranean one night in her kitchen.
Some say vacation is a dimension of leisure, a filter through which our lives look softer, shinier, more brilliant; but Veronica Watson convinced me that all those appearances can be translated into taste and swallowed. Easier than being transported in a plane or aboard a ship, with customs, passports and all that.
“Believe your stomach boy, more than your eyes,” she would say with a sultry Southern draw. Damn if she didn’t blindfold me and prove the point every time. For if I saw what I ingested, I might regurgitate. I never found it appetizing to ponder upon the pallor of fermented fruit or aged beef, but that’s another story. To taste a culinary concoction in the visually neutral realm of volunteered blindness; to rely not upon the sight of the edible illusion, but rather to discern its deeper essence by way of the taste bud and tongue, was to discover the truly liberating and magical qualities of food.
Veronica was a short order chef in a non-descript roadside diner, a retro sort of burger hop that harkened back to the simpler days before radicchio and fuel injection, a more innocent time when discovery was something experienced through a radio and love frequently bloomed amid limited confines in the back seat of a Chevy.
Perhaps I romance the Eisenhower Era, a time before seatbelts, civil rights and warnings on cigarettes packs. My gal said there wasn’t much to work with then besides salt and pepper; and that the world was perceived too often in terms of black and white. A worldly, well-traveled gypsy such as herself could have found the flavors she was looking for in big cities such as New York and San Francisco. That’s what she told me, but out here in the provincial sticks it was a darker, blander time.
I would meet Veronica out behind the kitchen on those humid early summer evenings when she stepped out for quick break and a breath of fresh air. Everyone else called her Ronnie except me. I preferred the regal, rather sensual completeness of her name to the truncated, simplified version. That’s the way her meals were too. No shortcuts.
I came to town as an outsider, a visitor from far away. Nephew of the town’s newspaper editor, a word man from the wilderness of west Wyoming. That’s where my Uncle Gus said people did what they said and said what they meant. He married a Georgia peach that he met while he was in the Marine Corps, a Camp Lejeune beauty, his little “PX pixie,” he called her. That pixie picked him up and pulled him on down to Dixie. The Mountain Man became a Bayou Boy, a Delta Dude, yet still “a Rocky Mountain oyster amid Southern Crackers.” My aunt didn’t care for such references to fricasseed bull testicles, yet she loved the contrarian accent of her “Grizzly Adams,” an archaic reference to an especially hirsute television character from the 1970s.
I was a California boy. Mom sent me back east to spend the summers with her brother because our pastor back home once implied that a single mother raising two boys couldn’t put enough testosterone into their upbringing to ensure definitive gender identity. Well, that’s the fancy way he put it anyway. What I think he was implying was that my mom was raising a pair of pussies.
Pastor Broughton’s boy put a good ass whipping to me one day when I refused to bow to the Anglicized Jesus portrayed on his day glow necktie. On account of the lingering black eye that mother said ruined my eighth grade class portrait, she had a few awkward words with her spiritual leader; and my guess was that, being the cheap ass, penurious, penny-pinching asshole he was, Pastor Broughton found a way out of paying compensation for his bully progeny and instead turned the matter into an excuse to intrude into Smith family affairs and perhaps cast a little judgment down upon the widow and her two “effeminate sons.”
Whatever transpired the night my mom paid an over-extended visit to the Broughton household, the ultimate outcome couldn’t rightly be contested. Despite the omnipresent heat, the greasy food and the ubiquitous chewing tobacco, my annual visits to Clarksdale Mississippi placed me precisely at a crossroads intersection with Veronica Watson. And in turn, Veronica’s cooking carried me to the four corners of the globe. Vacation with Veronica was a veritable feast, a virtual tour of latitudes otherwise unexplored. It was a bonanza, an extravaganza, a gourmand’s version of an out-of-body experience.
As I mentioned, I was on vacation with Veronica in her kitchen, sent by scintillating scents, transported by tantalizing tastes somewhere sunny and warm. It could have been the deserts of Egypt, or I could have been sitting to close to her oven. I don’t know. My eyes were covered by a tightly secured strip of cloth. One second I was admiring the ravenous outer strands of her luscious dark mane, how they hid certain portions of her countenance as she attempted to gage my reactions to a briny basting sauce; the next moment I was taken like a hostage and wrapped across the face with blinding bandana. Later she presented me with a blacked out pair of sunglasses and dubbed me the “Ray Charles of flavor.” She said I could see things blind that I might not otherwise notice if my sense of taste was corrupted by uncovered eyes.
My first night in Clarksville, wandering into her diner like a lost dog from a lonely highway stumbling upon some heavenly kennel, I fumbled and found my way to a lone open seat at the counter. Kismet, she called it. Serendipity. I ordered a French Dip sandwich and she told me I had hungry eyes. “Window to your soul,” she said, though she preferred to travel the gastrointestinal trail into my deeper being. “I’m not just here to peer in and have a look-see,” she contested. I had a hankering that she was ready to move in and redecorate.
“Are you Italian,” Veronica originally asked. When I told her I was Greek, she invited me back to her house for dinner. “Do you like souflaki? I make a great Tzat Ziki sauce. Come on over on Saturday night and see for yourself.”
Good Greek food was my Achille’s heel. I had a weakness for home cooking of almost any sort, but a Sunday feast at my Greek grandmothers was something truly special and memorable. Most weekdays, my brother and I were fortunate to get any kind of prepared meal. Mom would often work late at the office, occasionally toting home a bag of take-out or whipping up some Hamburger Helper with little or no fanfare or flavor. I learned to cook quesadillas on the majority of nights when we were left to fend for ourselves. They were quick, easy and satisfying, though probably not so nutritious. It was no wonder than, that Pastor Broughton’s son, fattening up on a frequent fare of pot roast, biscuits and gravy, had at least a 25-pound advantage on me. Ah, but I would make up for the malnutrition on Sunday evenings, gorging myself on generous portions of Gyros, Spanakopita, Pastitsio and Moussaka, followed by gluttonous helpings of Kataifi, Baklava and Amygdalopita.
I didn’t expect that Veronica could top my Yaya’s Sunday dinners, but I was curious about the smoky, sensuous way she made eye contact. She was so transfixed upon my eyes, her stare was so powerful and seductive that it turned me to jelly. It surprised me then, when she politely asked to place a blindfold upon me. Just as graciously, I yielded to her odd request. Turns out, that gal wanted to be my eyes, ears and fingers. She was ready to assume control of my senses and turn the volume up, so to say. A strange mixed metaphor, I know. But it seems to sufficiently explain the experience.
There was bouzouki music playing in her parlor. The air was rich with savory fragrances and alluring accents of Hellenic herbs. She sat me in a comfortable, overstuffed chair, placed Kalamata olives in my mouth one-by-one, then spoon fed me a smorgasbord of distinctly Mediterranean dishes. Veronica did all this while describing the texture of the Aegean Sea, a sunset on Santorini, and the pastoral calm of a Macedonian olive grove. She held my hand and guided me along as she described the campaigns and adventures of Odysseus.
“Can you imagine the pure delight, the sheer joy, the God-like thrill of kissing Penelope?” she gleefully inquired. I didn’t know who Penelope was, so she described Odysseus’s wife with a remarkably descriptive clarity, a literary portrait of a woman so faithful and dedicated that no man could resist such adoration.
“Would you like to taste such stalwart faith?” Veronica asked.
“Stalwart?” I repeated. She just sighed, then offered up a tablespoon full of the most delicious, full-bodied Avgolemono soup I had ever tasted.
I raved, I carried on for minutes, praising her cooking, waxing on and on about the exquisite flavor of her tangy broth. She listened patiently, humbly until I was finished, then insisted: “That, my dear boy, is the flavor of fidelity. Fidelity can be communicated by taste. Did you realize that?”
Then Veronica asked me if I would like to taste something better still. “Of course,” I replied.
“This is the kiss of Penelope,” she whispered into my ear, before pressing her soft, delicious lips against mine. The kiss lasted less than a minute, but seemed like an eternity on Mount Olympus. When she was finished, she lead me out of her kitchen onto the back porch, untied my blindfold, squeezed my hand and bid me good night with the following sage advice:
“Find the one thing you love, my dear; and pursue it with all your heart. Don’t hedge your bets. Better to burn the ships behind you as Odysseus did. Never look back or ponder anything less than full commitment.”
“Burn my ships?” I asked.
“The taste on your lips,” she replied. “If you like it, then meet me at the diner tomorrow.”
As I walked home that night amid the tropical heat of summertime Mississippi, I felt as though I had just returned from an odyssey, a sojourn across time and distance to somewhere divine and mystical. I had traveled to majestic places in the company of Gods and Goddesses; I had lost myself completely in another world for the first time since I was a child. Penelope’s kiss however, was no child’s kiss. If anything, it would make me a man.
I showed up at Veronica’s diner the next night, promptly at 6 p.m. – the end of her shift. My mind raced ahead of us on the long walk back to her place, full of anticipation and expectation. I reckoned on travelling down some culinary trails, losing myself amid the great big world she seemed so capable of conjuring in a cooking pot. I never expected to find myself instead, to discover the center of my soul in a bowl. Her wonderful kitchen was more like a school, a learning place where a wet-behind-his-ears youngster gets reared.
Veronica taught me that night that food is a gift, and so is a woman’s love. There are ways to prepare for both; napkin in your lap, best manners on display. “We are not animals,” she insisted. “We humans show restraint.” I sat real proper as I inhaled the savory aroma of her stew, salivating and wanting like hell to lurch forward and take a heaping helping as I pleased. And I’m not talking about the meal either. Lust is no different from hunger. The desire to please and feed myself had to be fought. She wanted to educate me in the ways of patience and self-control. There were civilized ways to behave; there was an orderly approach that distinguished man from beast, and if I wished to feast at Veronica’s table, it was essential that that I knew and reacted accordingly to the difference.
She didn’t blindfold me that night; rather she gazed intently and intensely into my eyes, then confessed in explicit detail the love she once had for another man. A man in a hurry, she explained, with little time to appreciate what a home-cooked meal really meant. I listened and conjured the image of an inpatient soul with little sense of gratitude or appreciation. Veronica talked of pearls before swine, of carelessly swilled wine that was meant to be savored and relished.
“Imagine those grapes,” she quipped. “Growing and ripening for a season under a lazy country son. Consider the weather, the nutrients in the soil, the love and expertise of the winemaker; all those varied ingredients that are gradually refined and distilled into that bottle, only to be taken for granted by hurried rogue at that magic moment, and for what?
He guzzled down the wine, never looking at the label; never appreciating the significance of the year. He rushed her to the bedroom, so her story went, never stopping to consider that it was their anniversary. All those intimate moments of preparation, each sacred second bestowed with the magic of memory. Shared time together enshrined and encapsulated within a fork full of nutrient, well-seasoned meat and vegetables gobbled down with little afterthought. A precious year of life spent together; shared experiences full of meaning, begging for a moment of reflection and interpretation only to be set aside with little or no sentiment.
Be grateful and full of thanksgiving with each bite of dinner. Value the company you keep and bond with those you break bread with, especially when marking significant milestones or anniversaries. All the more with the woman you love. There is so much more to taste in that case; so many little things that collectively add up to something special. These are the important ingredients of life, the vital steps a chef or a lover must master in order to achieve greatness in the kitchen or the bedroom.
There were so many secrets in Veronica’s dishes; so much magic and soul to serve to those who might appreciate it. This woman wanted so much more in life than sustenance. She expected flavor, seasoning, nuance and romance. She wanted to share more than a meal at the dinner hour; she gave such a defining portion of herself and desired love in return. I understood. I took her lesson to heart, and when she was finished I took her hand in a manner that communicated what I had learned. It was at that moment that Veronica led me to the bedroom and became my dessert. I could never count the calories, nor could I forget the nutritional nuptials of that spirit-melding moment. I digested far more than food that night. I had indeed tasted the ethereal sweetness of Penelope’s kiss.